


Like gold to airy thinness

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - no Luke and Leia, F/M, MayThe4th Treat, Padmé Amidala Lives, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Obi-Wan is five years into his long exile when he meets a dead woman.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 20
Kudos: 70
Collections: May the 4th Be With You Star Wars Fanworks Exchange 2020





	Like gold to airy thinness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



Obi-Wan is five years into his long exile when he meets a dead woman.

A proper Jedi who's taken on the role he has should not go out into the galaxy where he might be seen. He should stay on the dusty planet where he has made his new home, and he should otherwise dedicate himself to meditation, and peace, and acceptance. Qui-Gon was not the most exemplary of masters for a young padawan to learn from. He had many habits the other Jedi considered poor, including his habits of traveling and of poking his nose into places noses were not welcome. Obi-Wan should stay put. Instead he is out and about, poking his nose into rumors.

He's heard a story that Luminara was taken alive. He's heard other stories about other friends. How can he remain in isolation for so long when he might be able to find others, or to free those who were captured rather than killed? So he leaves his self-imposed exile from time to time, following riddles and increasingly stale leads and dwindling hopes.

One riddle brought him to Takodana, into the sphere of influence of someone with the Force. "Not interested," Maz Kanata told him. "The Jedi are all dead. I've no wish to join them." But when she kicked him out cordially, she did so with the name of a planet he's never visited, never even heard of.

This world sits in the Mid Rim, already in the grasp of the Empire, not interesting enough to squeeze. Obi-Wan passes a handful of stormtroopers as he goes from place to place. "Dorwen" was the only word Maz would give him; whether that was a place, a business, or a person, she refused to say.

It's all three.

The office isn't much more than an alcove in a large building, a self-named firm specializing in the transcription or creation of legal documents, with but one employee.

She's still beautiful, and he is momentarily perplexed. He's seen too much death in his time, and the ravages upon the flesh are famous. But here she is, five years past the time he could swear he watched her die, and time has only added to her loveliness in a way that strikes him to his core with unexpected power.

Padmé looks up from her desk as he walks in, her face at first surprised, then guarded. "How did you find me?" she asks, one hand below her desk. With some worry, he realizes she's readying a blaster.

"Hello, Senator. It's good to see you." The muscles in her arm twitch. She's planning to shoot him. "Maz Kanata told me where to find you."

Padmé lets out a swear Obi-Wan didn't think she knew. Both her hands come into view, clenching into impatient fists on the surface of her desk. "I didn't think Maz would sell me out that fast."

"She didn't tell me it was you. I thought you were a Jedi. I've been looking for old friends who survived. Forgive me for not ever considering you might be one of them." He thinks about that day, thinks about the droid announcing her death. A broken heart. And Obi-Wan, who had such little experience of broken hearts, had believed the diagnosis. "Was I the only one fooled?"

"I have no idea if Master Yoda believed us." Us? But she and Bail Organa have been friends for years, and he'd always been good with droids. "The only way Anakin would have let me go is if he believed I was dead. So I died. The droid stopped my heart and recorded an official time of death. He resuscitated me as soon as you left the room."

"That must have been dreadful."

"Everything that happened over those few days was dreadful. I try not to think about it." Her eyes give away that lie, but he understands. He's spent the last five years reliving every moment, wondering which decision he could have changed to have prevented such catastrophic outcomes. Padmé Amidala has always been one of the most formidable people he's ever known. She will have done the same.

"There was a funeral."

"I've been told the hologram was a perfect replica."

There's a second chair in her tiny office. Obi-Wan doesn't think he's about to be shot, and sits down opposite her. "It's good to see you again, Padmé. Better than I can express."

For a moment, her cold demeanor stays in place. This is not the kind yet strong young queen he met all those years ago. This woman has made harder choices than that girl could have ever imagined. But something of the old Padmé remains. Her face relaxes into genuine pleasure. "It's good to see you, too."

Long shadows stretch into the space between them, names he will not say to her if she does not want to speak them. He's itching to ask if she knows the identity of the Emperor's dark lapdog but Obi-Wan has no wish to cause her more pain upon the moment of his arrival if she does not carry that horror with the rest. He chooses a lighter topic. "Is Dorwen your given name or your family name?"

"It's both. What should I call you?"

"Ben. I've kept the Kenobi, I'm afraid."

"You'll be too easy to find."

He knows. He wonders to himself sometimes how many little traps he's left himself for Anakin to find should he ever come looking, and why. Padmé has changed her hair and her name, and without the trappings and paint of her old roles as a supportive frame, even her face seems to have taken on a different shape. She's better at this subterfuge than he is. She's a survivor in ways he suspects he will never become.

As he watches, she goes back to her work, finishing her day's tasks with a cool efficiency he's missed. 

"Come," she says, as she closes her terminal. "We'll get dinner." She leads him from her office and down a series of winding streets. Part of him wonders if she has returned to her notion of killing him to protect her own safety. Most of him knows better, and soon picks up the aroma of tantalizing smells.

This last road opens out into a wide avenue filled with street vendors selling their evening wares. Padmé, who once dined on the most elegant dishes, haggles in a language Obi-Wan doesn't know over the price of two skewers of freshly-cooked meat and fruit. Padmé passes over the money and hands one skewer to Obi-Wan.

"Careful," she tells him. "The spices are hot when you bite in." She demonstrates, getting a mouthful of yellow fruit with her first bite. He follows her lead. The tangy sweetness of the fruit is almost eclipsed by the stinging heat of the marinade sauce. He chews and swallows, and discovers a pleasantly cool aftertaste lingering in his mouth. The next juicy bite isn't as hot, and the rich flavor of the meat comes through.

"It's delicious, thank you."

"These are my favorite," she says as they walk, dripping rudely onto the ground. "I don't have anyone here to share them with."

"How have you been?" he asks her, and earns a sharp look which gradually melts when she understands he's not some fool making a casual inquiry.

"I do as well as I can. I've stayed in contact with a few close friends." The Organas, he assumes, and perhaps one or two of her most trusted handmaidens. "We're making plans."

"Plans?"

She walks silently for a while, eating her meal, thinking over ideas he can only speculate at. "The galaxy is crying out at the injustice surrounding us. Someone must answer the call." She gives him a long, piercing look that goes directly into his soul. He remembers the first time he saw her as herself, the elected Queen of a world that understood her power and potential, and he remembers how even then, the young man he'd been had been awestruck, momentarily ready to follow her anywhere. Obi-Wan is no longer a rash young man, but that youth lives inside him still. A part of him has loved her since that long ago moment.

"Someone must," he agrees.

Tension passes from her shoulders. "Do you have a place to stay?"

"I passed a hostel near the spaceport." The going rate is two credits for a blanket on a floor. He's slept in many similar places during his travels.

"You'll stay with me, then." She speaks as if the matter is settled. Obi-Wan once led men into battle and sat upon the Jedi High Council. He can't imagine saying no to her order now.

Her apartment is close by the square. From her small window, he can hear the bustle of voices in the avenue, selling their wares, arguing, calling to family members across the way. The apartment itself is tiny, no more than a sitting room with one plush cushion and a sleeping area separated by a curtain. There's a common 'fresher down the hallway, with facilities for humans as well as the other species that crowd into this city. Obi-Wan splashes water over his face and hair, enjoying the luxury of drops falling from his beard. An older man stares back from the mirror, one who has seen too many friends die, one who wonders why he's come here now.

When he returns to her small room, Padmé has already changed into a simple, flowing robe. She once spoke volumes with a crisp turn of fabric, and a careful tilt of a curl. Her robe is partway open, revealing the tender swell of one perfect breast.

"I didn't come here expecting this," is what he wants to say. "I believed you dead. I mourned you, along with the others yes, but also you alone and terribly so. You lied to me." He says nothing.

Padmé turns her face toward the tiny window. A breeze floats in with the sounds of the streets below. "I won't ask for anything you don't want to give."

She said the same the first time. He'd left Anakin back at the Temple for a special training session, and escorted the young Senator on what should have been a peaceful exploratory mission. They'd almost died, and in the cold and the fear, they'd turned to each other for warmth and comfort. He'd regretted the choice almost instantly after, regretted the lie he'd made of his vows, but more, regretted what he'd believed to be an unforgivable breach of Padmé's trust. She was a girl of barely eighteen, while he was a full Jedi Knight, and she'd laughed at him and kissed him and made love to him a second time as the frost covered the surface of their rude shelter.

So they went for years with an intermittent passion and no promises attached, a moment here, a long evening after an official function there. She treated him as any other friend until the moment they were alone, and her face turned to him with simple desire, and his hands found the hem of whatever heavy gown she wore, or the waistband of her practical trousers. And in the mornings, or even bare hours later, they parted again, nothing else between them but the friendship, or so he told himself to keep his sanity.

He had wondered when she cooled to him after Geonosis. She wouldn't tell him why even when she thawed after months, coaxing him into her bed in her lovely apartment high in the Coruscanti skyline. He suspected but never asked, not until there was no other question he could ask while the Temple burned and his friends all perished. Even after confirming the truth, that she had wed his best friend in secret and never told him, he would still have followed her had she only asked.

She's asking now. It isn't an apology for not having told him about her marriage to Anakin. Padmé will never apologize for being who she is, and Obi-Wan loves her all the more fiercely because of that.

"I have given you everything," he tells her. "I will always give you everything I have."

It is the only answer he can offer, the only promise he can make. She accepts with an incline of her head, and a shift in her position, offering in turn the bare skin of her legs. He kneels before her, and he presses his hot forehead against the cool skin of her knee. The scent of her desire fills his nose with a warm bloom, familiar and intoxicating as on that first night when he shuddered into her, the cry of her pleasure in his ears.

"Padmé...."

"Love me," she commands.

With tender care, he parts her legs, licking his own lips before bending his face in to love her again and again.


End file.
